by Ken Pence
“I will stay with Joel,” LeiLei said.
“I will go with you as will many of the Auxillary. Others can train the just freed,” said Xilatoi.
“I will stay a bit longer. I would like to meet the makers of the lamlee,” Shiv said.
Rett said, “I am destined to be with you humans a while longer. I will travel with you until we can confiscate a larger ship. I will take the lamlee and the ship at that time. Some more Tros may want to join me.”
Everyone was surprised at the long speech from Rett but he was getting more and more verbose – exposure to humans they decided.
“Lee – we haven’t heard from you,” Andrew said turning to face him.
Lee looked at Andrew. “The freed slaves were granted political asylum. I understand they can be granted permanent resident status after one Earth year and citizenship after five years. We were promised citizenship at the end of the war. The end of the war may have happened but we will continue to serve you until you no longer need us. We are treated like intelligent beings with identity. We risked our existence next to other organic species and feel a bond. Let us take half of the progeny and the other should assist the ERF. We want to find the makers of the lamlee. We want to meet the Ylee,” he said and stepped back against the wall.
“Rest of you feel the same?” he asked and they all nodded. “Okay then. I’ll call the Admiral. By the way folks – he’s invited us to a celebration party – wake.”
***
Andrew had contacted the Admiral. Brad had suggested that he had ordered the Auxillary Force to try to contact the Ylee and find the origin of the lamlee. Andrew still hadn’t told Brad, the extent of the lamlee they had recovered from the Allung. There were kilotons left even after reconstituting the progeny and giving half to the ERF and ES.
Brad suggested that they take half his force including ten of the newly coated ships, and visit planets in route to the area where the Allung had met the Ylee. They would need to finish off any Allung they found and make friends with the natives. We needed to establish trade routes and find habitable worlds.
“I will say I ordered you to find habitable worlds, establish trade routes, fight any foes and find the origin of the lamlee,” Brad said.
“I will follow those orders then Admiral,” answered Andrew.
“Carry on, Commodore,” Vice Admiral Brad Kyger said. “We’ll see you at the wake?”
“Yes sir,” Andrew said.
***
The wake was a roaring success with emphasis on the roaring part.
Andrew was walking arm in arm with Susan back to their quarters on the Junior II.
“You know. We have proved ourselves. We have a certain expertise,” he said.
“What’s that?” she asked expecting one of his puns but he surprised her.
“We’re not the smartest creatures, or the fastest or the strongest or the longest living…” he said.
“…and your point is?” she said.
“We’re adaptable…versatile…creative. I guess it comes from being so damn vulnerable,” he said.
“I thought you were going to say our expertise is in hospitality like the Eugene Hotel – which I want to visit again on the way – the honeymoon suite…or maybe you were going to say we were valiant warriors and stubborn or we throw great parties,” she said.
“We are on all counts,” he said a little put out at her flippancy.
“But we certainly have expertise in fecund practice,” she said with a grin.
“Fecund? Productivity…fertile?” he said.
“Yep. I’m pregnant,” she said.
He stood stock still for a long second and then kissed her passionately.
“I want to perfect my expertise again right now,” he said and kissed her again.
“Commodore…not here. What kind of girl do you think I am?” she said.
“Already know the answer to that,’ he said and scooped her up and carried her to their quarters. The few crewmembers who saw them pass, grinned and looked away.
About the Author
Ken R. Pence, PhD is an engineering professor at Vanderbilt University and an active martial artist, a 5th degree blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do, and a private pilot. He is a retired captain from the Metro Nashville Police Department where he served 31 years (16 on SWAT) and has taught police and military in the US, and Europe (England, Germany, France, and Northern Ireland) in confrontation management skills.
He is currently researching an advanced sniper location system for DARPA. He also is researching magnetic levitation systems.
Want to hear from you – contact me at:
[email protected]
Ramblings about the technology in this novel
Several things are interesting about these technologies - some of it is in practice or on the drawing boards. The stun weapons exist today – two parallel ultraviolet lasers ionize the air and a high voltage charge is applied to these channels in the air like wires, to hit skin and cause the muscles to lock – ultraviolet tetanizing weapon. I was on a committee approving the study on humans in 1999 but couldn’t talk about it until 2005 when it was patented. There were other patents in 1997 – 2003 covering the topic.
Invisibility: tons of patents – meta-materials that can bend microwave and other high frequency sources around them exist today. The projection of the image of what is behind you exists today and you can see it on tanks on the Net today – already exists. MIT got a multi- million grant to make clothing that would enhance the strength of soldiers – it already exists. If you are interested – look up Exoskeleton II by Lockheed – another incarnation of enhanced strength. It already exists and is in use. Vanderbilt Engineering submitted a white paper in 2011 on having computers recognize threats based on behavior – it is doable today and getting better. The ability of a computer to take multiple video inputs and construct a cogent analysis, showing what happened, is doable today.
The weapons, except the molecular disruptor could be constructed today with better power sources. Much of what we do would change if we had portable high-capacity power sources. Laser and neutron projectors can be built – It’s the power generation that is the hitch. We purchased a car this year that could drive itself in a limited fashion (2012). Research is close on anti-aging – if you can live another thirty years – you will probably be able to live another 50 years if you are wealthy. That will change a lot of things. I had 31 years as a police officer and now I teach engineering and still teach martial arts at 61 – what if I lived another 60 years. Men in my family often live over 100 now. Soon the wealthy will have that option.
Look how Europeans affected trade in the Polynesian island nations – we need to remember the past. All aliens will not be altruistic. They will not be all bipeds. We will have ENORMOUS difficulties talking with them – I hope they have Trade, Esperanto or the like.
We are approaching the learning machine stage – it will have a huge impact and we are closer than you probably think. We can recognize symbols, letters and numbers from thought alone using specialized MRI software – and that is just the unclassified work. We are close and it will hit us hard if we do not have to memorize data – great improvement and headed your way.
Kinetic armor – I have helped develop Kevlar and other ceramic/composite armor for decades – I wouldn’t want to try attacking a US soldier 50 years from now.
MemDexs – we could just say the smart phones five years from now – my phone does a lot of what the ones in the story do. Lamlee – circuitry that evolves – maybe in the future – why not?
Don’t worry – the last follow-up to the first three books follows. In Core Values, we learn that Core Worlds races are far in advance of our own. We track down what happened to the Ylee and the lamlee.
Core Values
© 2013 by Ken R. Pence
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without email permission of the author.
/> ISBN 978-1481985574
Printed in US
This is a work of fiction. Some of the characters are named after fans and friends.
Earth and the Exploration Service destroyed the bulk of the Allung slave traders. New transition technology lets them travel thousands of light years instantly and they’ve seized accumulated positional data (charts) from the Allung Confederation. The Earthers are traveling closer to the galactic core where the Allung may have run into the Ylee, the possible creators of the lamlee.
The Ylee region of space is close to LeiLei and Shiv’s home world and we will go there first. Earth wishes to expand: explore, and tame further systems near the core. They have to decide what type of expedition to form – do they need a lone ship, a squad or an armada. Earth has had opposition at every step of their travels and many groups on Earth are finding the means to look for a future, an escape into space. Earth may not survive its success.
Major Characters
Andrew Williams – Commodore over Earth’s Auxiliary Service
John Brattor – Chemical specialist (recovered team member)
Tod Schroeder – a physicist because of the dead cat
Desiree Bardeen – Linguist -- Martial artist – wife of Tod
Eugene Bradley Phillips - capitalist left @ Bellatrix
Susan Kama Siriluk – Materials specialist – wife of Andrew
Ling Tanaka – psychologist/biologist/psychiatrist
Fran Bergdal – environmental scientist and wife of Brad
Joel Fredrickson – Mechanical Engineer – fabrication
Steve Cutcher – electronics/IT/circuits
Vice Admiral Bradford Kyger– Earth Regulatory Force
Rett – Tros scientist/Inventor
LeiLei – Lemsla (feline-like) female – mate of Joel
Shiv – Vicvic (Mantis) female
Lee Post – Post Ylee Lamlee construct being
Shuma – Bellatrix scientist - inventor of the Maker
Xilatoi – knowledge master of the Phafalotoi
Will Castellano – ERF Lt Commander assigned Bellatrix
Umma – Exploration Service Cruiser Captain
Cetosme –Master Arbitrator on the Allung Council
Rich Darby – ERF Captain over ground forces (SF)
Rajit Ratnaike – Captain of Scout ship Hasta
Progeny – recreated human-looking beings – 100% lamlee
Lamlee – molecular circuitry with telepathic assembly – used as currency in some areas of the galaxy – improves function of electronic devices if applied properly…self-assembling nano circuitry.
Lights – multiples of the speed of light in vacuum (700 lights equals 700 times the speed of light and is near the threshold, transition speed for inter-dimensional “jumps” in space.
The Journal of John Brattor
My name is John L. Brattor, and I’m not going to tell you what the “L” stands for (yes, I ended this with a preposition – fire me – this is MY story). See – I distracted you from my initial. I am on the original team that reverse engineered the alien field belt. I determined the “secret” catalyst and helped Steve and Tod figure out the cold fusion process. Tod and Steve were the ones to up the power output by orders of magnitude though…Andrew and Tod get the credit for the incremental improvements and uses of the stressed space field. Susan and Desiree actually gave Andrew and Tod the idea of setting up the time-accelerating Enclosures.
Let me rewind the story a bit. We, the synthesist team, had just built some prototypes to generate enormous power. We were demonstrating for the university along with this big muckety-muck named Phillips. He turned out to be a real sleaze but I ‘kind of’ owe him for being back in the saddle again. I’ll save that story for later. We had to throttle back these generators ‘cause they could put out huge amounts of power for long periods – tremendous output. The generators even used some of our nuclear waste as a catalyst.
Anyway – I happened to be standing over one the heavy output cables when we accidentally knocked loose the pegged throttle, the governor and the full output hit the cable I was standing over. I remember the flash and the pain in my crotch and chest but I lost consciousness pretty quickly. Phillips was the one that got me help and had specialists scaffold the skin cells to rebuild my body. I had a ton of surgeries on my chest but I was toast from the waist down. The plasma ball seared me so I had a colostomy bag. I didn’t have any motivation to do anything. My legs were seared into sticks. I was stuck in a bed for years. I got a bit more mobile later but I’ll skip that part because it is just a pitiful me story and I’m beyond all that now.
Phillips dropped his medical support as soon as the group released the power supply plans over the web because everyone was trying to steal the plans. We couldn’t keep the design secret so we licensed what we could. The synthesist team made quite a bit of money and always kept up financial support for me, but it was tough to see my teammates doing so much I wanted to do. I will say I had little ambition and no gonads right then.
That’s when Phillips popped up again when the team started traveling in space (they told me they had kidnapped his ass – right from his house before they went gallivanting off across the spiral arm). Phillips was a really, old dude and he decides to see some med tech on another planet on a spur-of-the-moment jaunt. He gets some fountain-of-youth treatment and Earth imports a lot of that tech. My case comes up again as they can regrow body parts. No kidding. Andrew and Susan (married now) come to me after the big battle with the Allung and tell me they can fix me up.
I told them I was through with surgeries. They said that the alien tech mapped proteins that prevented regeneration and the alien tech reactivated regressive genes for regeneration. They laughed then, which shocked the hell out of me ‘cause they were being so serious and they told me the regeneration wasn’t that hard – they said the hard part was not growing a tail from the coccyx area. I had seen the alien feline-like female, Leilei and told them I wouldn’t mind growing back all my lowers. Oh yeah – it’d be nice to walk again too. I said go ahead.
I would have said, no, if I had known how friggin’ painful it would be -- it was worth it. My muscles were atrophied and it’s taken me two years to get up to speed on the research, the back stories from my colleagues and get my body whole and ripped. I started taking language and history cylinders right then. I wanted to speak Trade, Tros, Ullumff, Allung – everything. That was two years normal time but only three weeks within Enclosure Eight, here, near Phoenix. I am going on the coming, big expedition but I need to record some of the stories from the original team and ESF folks.
***
I’m going to shorten this story because I don’t want readers to die of old age – so much happened after we (using the royal we here since I feel part of the team still) first left our solar system. We visited Tau Ceti first and it had a habitable planet with intelligent, indigenous natives – we learned to travel about 700 times the velocity of light. We detected a ship near Earth and RAN into the Exploration Service. Had a little disagreement over whose weapons were more powerful and then worked out a trade agreement with them, which included lots of literature on different alien races. It also covered what we thought were standard navigation aids and environmental standards.
Earth built a quarantine station on the moon that tried to live up to the standards in those damn manuals. We had to invent whole new ways to meet the specs but we did it with the help of a time accelerating enclosure we developed. The lunar base was not universally liked. A rogue military element tried to take us down there but we squeaked by and got the upper hand. Trade negotiations went well and it turned out our attempts to meet the specs in the manuals were highly acclaimed…because those specs in the manuals were ideals that no race had ever attained – until we did it – who knew. Earth was such a babe in the woods – still are a bit, but learning.
We geared up our ship construction and met the next, alien trade missions as best we could. They all want
ed to trade on Earth and not on the moon. We formed the Earth Regulatory Force, or the ERF for short, to police the trade. This is where Phillips came in again. He was sabotaging plans to develop trade locations on Earth so my teammates kidnapped him. We traveled to Sirius, found slaves turning out teaching cylinders. We took over the complex, freed the slaves and got tons of language and history cylinders. LeiLei was a captive scientist and she joined the team. She and Joel fell for each other and she’s a real sex kitten in every feline sense of the word. She did have a fling for Steve for a bit but Joel was match. That’s where we really learned about lamlee and the Ylee. Lamlee are these nanodots that can assemble and improve any electronic circuit.
The team went to Procyon and figured out a way locate quantities of lamlee. They ran into some competition and acquired Shiv. She is a VivVic female that is like a two-meter high praying mantis but super intelligent. A deal was struck and Shiv became a member of the team. They then went back to Tau Ceti, had a dust up and acquired some ceramics tech and more lamlee and information about the Ylee. The Ylee appeared to be a water-based race like an Earth cephalopod.
***
Had to take a break…so much has happened… Okay…same expedition but they now go to 68 Eradani and got attacked on arriving and again on the surface – a pattern was emerging – we needed good armaments. We acquired more – new tech and good trade goods. Then the expedition went to Bellatrix. More trouble but the team was getting the hang of it – they thought – by then. The expedition gets attacked at a tavern – an attempted shanghai of the team by a bunch of slavers. The upgraded suits fought off the attack for their unconscious wearers. The ship personnel send reinforcements that eliminate the attackers and take over their slave ship as our crew revives.
